Resurgent Authoritarian Influence:

Evidence from the Machine Learning for Peace Dataset

PDRI-DevLab

University of Pennsylvania

May 17, 2024

Jeremy Springman, Erik Wibbels, Serkant Adiguzel, Mateo Villamizar Chaparro, Zung-Ru Lin, Donald Moratz, Diego Romero, Hanling Su,

Overview


  1. Introduce data on Russian and Chinese influence on developing countries
  2. Describe influence cross-nationally and over time
  3. Examine Russia’s pre-invasion behavior

Resurgent Authoritarian Influence?

Background:

  • Collapse of Soviet Union: less influence by autocracies
  • Recently, powerful autocracies becoming more assertive in foreign policy

Foreign Influence:

  • Actions by the government of an influencing country to affect the policies, capacity, or behavior of a target country to advance its own national interests

Influence Tools

Data Production: Scraping

Input: Online news

  • 300+ news sources
  • 35+ languages
  • 100+ million articles

Data quality

  • Focus on high-quality domestic news outlets
  • Much better coverage than extant archivers/aggregators (GDELT, Wayback, Lexis Nexis, etc.)



Output: Monthly data

  • 60 countries
  • 2012 - 2024

Underlying Data: Crawlers vs Direct

Data Production: Text Classification

  • Robustly Optimized BERT Pretraining Approach (RoBERTa)
  • Fine-tuned on double human-coded training data (n=3,400)

Data Production

Describing RAI: Spheres


  1. Russian influence is more concentrated in a geographic sphere of influence
  2. Spheres of influence are shifting over time
  3. Russia has dramatically expanded its sphere in recent years, challenging China’s dominance

Describing RAI: Spheres

Describing RAI: Spheres

Describing RAI: Spheres

Describing RAI: Tools


  • Economic Power is the most prevalent theme
  • Beginning in 2022, Diplomacy increases dramatically in places where Russia’s influence grew

Describing RAI: Tools

Describing RAI: Tools

Describing RAI: Tools

Describing RAI: Tools

Did Russia Signal Invasion?

Did Russia Signal Invasion?

Did Russia Signal Invasion?

Did Russia Signal Invasion?

Did Russia Signal Invasion?

Hard Power

Diplomacy

Diplomacy

Period

Accuracy

False Positive

True Positive

Total

Aug-Jan

Count

2

3

5

Row pct

40.0%

60.0%

Feb (Pre)

Count

4

7

11

Row pct

36.4%

63.6%

Feb (Post)

Count

8

5

13

Row pct

61.5%

38.5%

March

Count

3

2

5

Row pct

60.0%

40.0%

Total

Count

17

17

34

Diplomacy

  • Countries with change points:
    • 2022: 37
    • 2018-2021: average of 1.6
    • Previous high of 3 in 2015

Diplomacy

  • True Positives:
    • Aug-Jan: Antagonism (Kosovo), celebration (Bangladesh), military intervention (Kazakhstan)
    • Feb 1-23: High profile meetings (Serbia, Belarus, Nicaragua, Hungary, Turkey), major statements (Albania, India)
  • False Positives:
    • Aug- Jan: domestic reporting on geopolitics (El Salvador, Peru)
    • Feb 1-23: domestic reporting on/criticism of Russian build-up (Cameroon, Jamaica, Nepal, Philippines)

Hard Power

Period

Accuracy

False Positive

True Positive

Total

Aug-Jan

Count

5

6

11

Row pct

45.5%

54.5%

Feb (Pre)

Count

3

1

4

Row pct

75.0%

25.0%

Feb (Post)

Count

4

1

5

Row pct

80.0%

20.0%

March

Count

2

1

3

Row pct

66.7%

33.3%

Total

Count

14

9

23

Hard Power

  • Countries with change points:
    • 2022: 24
    • 2021: 10
    • 2017-2020: average of 2
    • Previous high of 4 in 2012

Hard Power

  • True Positives:
    • Aug-Jan: direct security cooperation (Mali, Pakistan, Burkina Faso, Belarus), security antagonism (Kosovo, Georgia)
    • Feb 1-23: direct security engagement (Ethiopia)
  • False Positives:
    • Aug-Jan: security response over Russia’s influence on neighbors (Angola, Niger, Colombia), domestic reporting on geopolitics (Cameroon, Peru)
    • Feb 1-23: security response over Russia’s influence on neighbors (Hungary), domestic reporting on geopolitics (Bangladesh, India)

Accuracy

Explaining Increased Influence

  • Explain variation in:
    • Countries with largest increase in Russian influence
    • Countries targeted before Feb 2022
  • Potential causes of targeting:
    • International influence (rotating seats on international and regional bodies)
    • Strategic value (trade ties, resource endowments)

Explaining Increased Influence

mlpeace.org/rai